


Field Test

by pentapus



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-20
Updated: 2016-04-20
Packaged: 2018-06-03 09:09:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6605071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pentapus/pseuds/pentapus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You could smile more,” Natasha said.</p><p>“I'd be out of character,” the agent said blandly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Field Test

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Haywire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haywire/gifts).



The dog’s leash hung in the crook of Natasha’s elbow as she looked for her credit card. The sound of children’s voices was hitting a familiar note inside her brain, the shadows of a childhood she remembered so poorly she sometimes wondered if it had been real. She let out a slow, melancholy breath but didn't push the feeling back. It was useful to the person she was today. She let it wash over her, smiling fondly at a boy pushing his face curiously against the glass of the ice cream cooler.

“You could smile more,” Natasha said, her long fingers flicking lightly through her clutch purse.

The cashier’s head jerked up in panic. “Ma’am?”

Natasha turned her head. She flashed her teeth at the agent behind her, looming over Natasha in slender, black slacks and a sturdy leather jacket.

“I’d be out of character,” the agent said deadpan, hands clasped behind her back. She’d done the bare minimum to be out of uniform, not a particularly good sign in an undercover partner. A rough spot on the shoulder marked a missing patch. Natasha sighed.

The agent’s body language was either tone deaf or possibly -- Natasha wondered -- gay. She stood stance wide, knees springy, arms loose. On a woman, the pose looked stocky and confrontational. Either the agent had gotten used to being socially punished for her professionalism or she _was_ gay and didn’t miss the male admiration her posture sacrificed.

Together the two of them must look like an exceptionally awful blind date. The agent had spent the whole time looking out the window instead of at Natasha. She would have looked less out of place standing behind a president with a corkscrew cord trailing from her ear. 

Natasha approached this sort of thing differently. The trick was to change what was true. Like meditation, you shifted your thoughts into new tracks. Natasha’s arms forgot how to punch. Her legs forgot how to dodge. She held her hands delicately in front of her so that her purse and the dog’s leash hung from each elbow next to the bunched up sleeves of the baggy thrift store sweater she'd pulled over her buttery sundress.

“Did you name her?” the agent asked dryly, lifting an eyebrow at the little terrier licking dried ice cream off the floor tiles. She missed politeness and ended up somewhere near emotive brick wall. 

“Lunchbox,” Natasha said. The little terrier had followed them to the window seat with barely a tug at Natasha’s elbow. It was probably a trained service dog. That was SHIELD’s M.O.: overkill and extra paperwork.

“She was expensive,” the agent murmured as she sat. Theory confirmed. “Don’t lose her.”

Natasha wasn’t interested in how SHIELD had gotten the dog. The request had been a basic boundary test, to see what SHIELD would and wouldn't let her get away with. The dog had been delivered promptly by Hill: a woman with the looks to play the hook but who moved like a bruiser.

Hill was unapologetic about her poor undercover work. Maybe she meant to make the mission more difficult, but Natasha had worked under much worse conditions. Hill's wooden expressions were nothing more than the canvas for Natasha's art. By altering the details of her own behavior, Natasha could turn the dial on how they appeared to outsiders -- from awful blind date to ten-year marriage. 

Natasha did consider playing their relationship as platonic, but the difference between Hill and Natasha was that Natasha _did_ mean to be difficult. They’d woken her up in her grey cinderblock cell and given her a field assignment with no success criteria and no parameters except a request to demonstrate ‘full character immersion’ and a sheet of neighborhood demographics.

Natasha flicked her gaze past the granite architecture of Hill’s cheekbones to the office park across the wide street. SHIELD had given her one final notice before the mission started, apparently unrelated and delivered as though they thought it was a gift: that Barton was in the field, unfortunately out of contact. Natasha had stared back at the messenger until he’d stepped carefully back. She was not going to pretend to care about someone she'd only worked with once -- in the bizarre special circumstances of her own escape and defection. 

In the six months since Clint had brought her in, SHIELD had been careful to always keep Natasha apprised of Agent Barton’s location. 

It was a bad tell, and it grated. SHIELD controlled everything about her life, but they thought _Barton_ was the leverage they had over her. What about regular food? Clean restrooms? Basic nutrition? All better levers than a disaster of a human being who’d once chosen to miss his shot for Natasha’s sake.

Natasha probably had her own self to blame for SHIELD clumsily trying to hold Barton over her. She had shared her vulnerabilities so often with every character she played that nobody believed any of them were real. They didn’t understand that truth made the most powerful lies. No, they thought it was more likely that the Black Widow couldn’t be swayed by simple human comforts.

There was a tight ball of anger rolling around in Natasha’s gut that she didn’t like at all. She should be laughing; SHIELD were clumsy manipulators, and Barton was just someone who’d made a bad decision that -- temporarily -- had benefited Natasha. SHIELD’s attempt at leverage was not effective. It shouldn’t make her angry every time they tried to lean on it.

Hill shifted in the other seat, and Natasha’s focus narrowed. Certain thoughts occurred to her about how to confuse SHIELD’s understanding of the... Barton situation.

She shifted forward, elbows on the table, ice cream held light-heartedly in front of her face. She savored a bite with relish and smiled at Hill.

“Thank you, but no,” Hill said. Natasha ran her tongue thoughtfully against the spoon still in her mouth to hide her mild surprise. 

Ah, Hill was -- very careful. And maybe not so inexperienced with undercover as Natasha had thought if she could spot a seduction at first smile. She shifted back, giving the dog a little tug so that it looked up and licked curiously at Natasha’s calf. “My mistake.”

She shut down the invitation in her body posture -- their blind date became measurably more hopeless to anyone watching -- and didn’t mention that listening to the mark was a more effective seduction technique than blunt proposition. Hill's rejection helped Natasha cycle through different approaches. She would find the one that worked. The one that blunted the edge of what SHIELD thought was their perfect tool. 

_Barton_. They thought she owed him something. SHIELD had miscalculated. Natasha wasn’t going to owe Clint _anything_ until the place he’d offered her turned into something more than an unusually comfortable POW experience. If Natasha failed whatever test this was, if she went back to a cell tonight, maybe she’d think about killing Clint. You didn’t survive long with Natasha’s reputation if you went around ignoring double-crosses.

A man came in, ringing the bell above the door and catching Natasha’s attention instantly by the way his jacket shifted -- God Bless Texas, there was a loaded sidearm not ten feet away. That was a better back up plan than stealing the biggest pickup in the lot and betting on the glove compartment. 

SHIELD thought the purpose of this mission was to evaluate Natasha. They thought it had two possible outcomes: either they approved her field ready status or they sent Natasha back to her cell. 

But Natasha didn’t have to wait for that. She would keep adjusting who she was until she found the persona that had an edge on Maria Hill, the one that put Natasha in control. Then she would decide whether to steal gun, pickup, and dog and leave like a country song or to voluntarily follow Hill back to base. Her handlers would never realize Natasha had made a choice.

Hill was watching her, mostly disinterested but with a hint of wariness. Natasha didn’t smile or lick her ice cream. Hill had called foul on blatant seduction. So Natasha showed Hill her real smile, the one that still laughed a little inside with every breath Natasha took: _Still alive_. Caught flat-footed by a world renowned sniper and still alive; it would never stop being funny. Humor, dark and bloody, had gotten Natasha through the worst of everything, and it showed in the skewed pull of her lips.

Hill didn't twitch, but her pupils flared and her skin flushed minutely. 

Gotcha, Natasha thought.

**

“You’ve got it backwards,” Hill said, reloading. “You think they’re holding Barton over you.”

The guard collapsed, finally, and Natasha whipped the dog leash off his neck, wrapping it neatly around her wrist with a flick.

“We’re holding _you_ over Barton." Hill slammed the clip home and crept to the door, back to the wall. “He's suspended, contingent on your performance. You decide to rabbit, I can add ‘permanent’ to the suspension currently on file.”

“He’s in the field now,” Natasha said, like an idiot. She pressed her lips together, looking away up the hall of the office building. She hadn’t meant to blurt that out, to act like Hill's bluff bothered her. 

Hill made a frustrated noise like something had died in her throat. “Those notes come from Barton, who’s lying. He sends you those updates because he doesn’t want you to worry.” She sighted carefully around the corner and fired twice. Someone screamed. “Whatever whammy you put on him, it’s the best I’ve ever seen.” She shot Natasha a thoughtful look. “It’s a good reference for your skills.” 

The anger that Natasha had been holding in her stomach started climbing up her throat. The walls felt huge and heavy and too close. _They have nothing over me_ , she said to herself like a lucky mantra. The trick was to change what was true. “He’s in a bad situation then,” she said, but it sounded too annoyed and she had to take a breath. 

Hill wasn’t even looking at her. 

Natasha lifted an eyebrow, letting her eyelashes drop demurely as she smiled, but her voice was nasty and cynical and didn’t match her sweet smile: “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather be the lever SHIELD’s holding over me?”

Hill snorted and kicked down the door. “Extraction in ten.”

**

The paper report landed on the padded exam table next to Natasha’s hip. She finished pulling on the heather gray SHIELD t-shirt she’d been given to replace the torn sundress, the stitches pulling at the skin over her ribs. An acceptably minor wound, and the self-sacrifice would work in her favor.

“You passed,” Hill said.

Natasha hesitated, only a half a second but still too long. Hill would have noticed, would have filed away that Natasha hadn’t been as confident as she’d pretended.

Natasha let the last of the cover identity fall away, leaving behind the temporary emotional dissociation that every one of her handlers had mistaken for the real Natasha. The cool, metallically opaque Black Widow. She regarded the papers with a flat expression. They were an AAR. The bottom line read: provisional security clearance approved in red ink.

“They won’t be docking Barton,” Hill added. Natasha didn’t look up. Hill’s voice was uncharacteristically gentle. 

If everything Natasha felt hadn’t just been drained away, Natasha would be angry again. Hobbled now by _Barton_ of all people. That was a bigger joke than Clint deciding to miss his shot in the first place.

Hill was typing into a tablet, standing with the screen tilted so Natasha could see Hill type in a username and password and start navigating a file structure. At the end of it was a personnel file. Barton’s. That was admittedly harder to fake than just showing Natasha a file already queued up.

“I don’t need to see this,” Natasha said, but it sounded weak. She didn’t believe it herself. 

Hill kept holding the tablet out. Her face turned away, giving the wall her best bored stare. Natasha thought about outlasting her; she was a stalking predator after all -- except instead her eyes were flickering over the screen, catching the line that said _suspension ended: returned to active duty._

And something inside her unknotted. She slid off the exam table to her feet, taking too long to pull her hair back into a simple bun. She pulled it out and did it again until she was sure her face could maintain the shuttered blankness that was so usefully unnerving. It had been stupid of Barton to bring her in, but that his decision had been objectively a bad one didn’t erase what it had done for Natasha. A feeling of gratitude was understandable. Human. Even if it was wholly inconvenient. And it was even okay perhaps to be glad the person who had been kind to her had not suffered for it. 

Hill was tapping at the tablet, politely not watching. 

Natasha watched her until Hill looked up. Hill quirked an eyebrow. She was someone rare at SHIELD -- she didn’t seem to expect much from Natasha at all. Natasha almost responded with another flirt to hide the gratefulness she still had trouble admitting to herself. It would be easier.

Instead, Natasha matched her body language to Hill’s, spine straightening, feet shifting to something close to parade rest. She held out her hand, gripping Hill’s. Blunt. Professional. 

“Thank you,” Natasha said.

HIll’s hand closed firmly around Natasha’s fingers. Her smile warmed without losing it’s edge. Her body language opened, softening, and as Natasha’s own expression opened in surprise -- _here! This! This was what she’d been looking for!_ \-- Hill said, “I look forward to working with you, Agent Romanov.”


End file.
